Colitis Crohn’s Disease: Symptoms Are Similar

When a person’s digestive tract starts to show signs of malfunctioning, diagnosing the problem can often be confusing since there could be more than one disorder to contend with and symptoms from one disorder may overlap with those of another. What’s more, diagnosing Colitis and Crohn’s disease can take up a lot of time and doctors usually need to make trial and error steps before the disorder is properly diagnosed.

In fact, Colitis and Crohn’s disease can be confused with one another since both diseases are very similar as far as their symptoms go and typically, when suffering from Colitis or Crohn’s disease, it is quite common to notice signs such as diarrhea, abdominal cramps, low energy, and fever as well as low appetite and even weight loss.

Both Colitis and Crohn’s disease is caused by inflamed tissues and it is believed that today as many as two million Americans are sufferers of either Colitis or Crohn’s disease.

As far as Crohn’s disease is concerned; it will generally affect the person’s small intestine though at the same time it can occur in the rest of the body as well and thus you could find that it affects the stomach and appendix as well as even the esophagus and also the duodenum, anus and even large intestine. On the other hand, colitis affects only the colon.

However, whether you are suffering from Colitis or Crohn’s disease, it is still possible to find that the diseases go into remission, followed by abrupt flare-ups that can cause deterioration in your well being. In fact, though physically the symptoms could be similar, psychologically they are different and in fact, either condition could even lead to depression as well as unsociable behavior.

The treatment of Colitis and Crohn’s disease can also be similar and most people generally opt to take drugs to cure the symptoms and typically, the drugs taken include antibiotics, immunomodulators, immune suppressants as well as undergoing biological therapy.

However, drugs cannot be taken to cure Colitis Crohn’s disease because colitis can only get cured if the patient undergoes surgery to have their colon removed while surgery for Crohn’s disease that affects many different parts of the body can only provide relief from the symptoms.

There is also the need to distinguish between Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis and though the symptoms for both types of these inflammatory bowel diseases are more or less the same, treatments could be different for each.

In fact, experts on inflammatory bowel disease are of the opinion that treating Colitis Crohn’s disease requires daily maintenance and so, performing exercises and keeping stress levels low can go a long way in keeping both diseases under control.